RIGHT WING HYSTERIA/LEFT WING HYSTERIA

Any more crap on softwood lumber or addled-cow-horror and we are going to seriously cut down on the export of BC bud.

You are obviously not familiar with Meigs County, Ohio--we got yer "BC bud."

We will valiantly resist all Canajun efforts at softwood hegemony . . .

Pity James Michener isn't still alive. There's a wonderful story to be told about the break-in of a Hell's Angel's clubhouse, the theft of certain hydroponic varieties, the dangerous overland voyage to Meigs County, etc.

Michener was a hack, in my never humble opinion . . .

I met him in a hostel in Madrid in 69. Didn't know it was him until about a year later. Teenie little guy and not terribly talkative.

His historical novels bear exactly that relationship to history which Christian Science does to christianity and science. The one good book he produced was Kent State, and his very obvious credulity is embarrassing. He reports the number of "Daniel Boones" and "Davy Crocketts" on Water Street in Kent, Ohio, of a Saturday night. ("And just who are you supposed to be, young man?" "Huh? Oh, uh . . . Davy Crockett, Man, Davy Crockett . . . say, you got any spare change?") In another passage he describes "a typical hippie commune." It begins with the bald statement that: "Each commune has a large African drum." ("What's that over there, young man?" "That? Oh, that . . . that's a large African drum . . . all the communes got one of those.")

I rather suspect that most of what he got right in that book was a product of his indefatiguable team of graduate students who spoke the language and were able to "walk the walk."

He was travelling with a bright and sparky large young fellow at the time. I never read the book that came out of the research he was doing then (young american 'hippies' travelling in europe).

I know the one you're talking about, but disremember the title. I had little inclination to read it, having read enough of his work by then to be disgusted by how popular he was despite his idiocy . . . he really butchers history, and you know how well that goes down with me . . .

The Drifters . . . that was the title of that particular piece of pap . . .

I once attempted to read Centenniel. The opener in a typical version of his time game (stratified & parallel stories about events over millions of years occurring at the same place). I got as far as Mitscher's rendition of the Brontosaurus' thoughts as she walked slowly across the swamp....

"Tales of the South Pacific" were pretty good though.

I read Michener's Rascals in Paradise at the beach this summer. It's supposedly one of his "non-fiction" gems.
I left it at the beach for the next budding historian to discover.

Hawaii. I loved it. Was thirty years ago, but it can't have lost that much in the interim.

Seize the moment, Set. Now you should probably have pretty good grasp of how I feel about your offerings on language.

I was once asked: "What would you say to a student who said history is written by the winners." Is that a left or right wing comment?

Hysteria is a noun? BM

I think some muslims are horrified by the excesses of their zealots and nutters (cf Israelis)

Islam seems to have a lot going for it..but it can be construed and used, for those who are minded that way, in an aggressive way.

Speaking of which, does anyone recognise the lines

"From victory to victory
His army he shall lead
Till every foe is vanquished
And Christ is Lord indeed."

We all do a bit of posturing and "marching as to war", so maybe we should look to the beam in our own eye first.

As I recall, it was a dyplodocus [Sp?], not a brontosaurus. Geez, george, get yer facts straight! (Though why you should when Michener never did, I don't know.) What really got me about Centennial was that in order to tell the story of 19th Century Colorado, he has to start with what amounts to the creation of the Planet Earth. And, of course, generation by generation, evrything dovetails.

In Michener's defense, though, I've often wondered how much of those five-pound books he actually wrote himself. He had squads of grad students doing "research" for him. Wouldn't surprise me if what he really did after the research was completed amounted to little more than a cut-and-paste job with connecting paragraphs only written by the master himself.

JTT, you badly need to get over your silly, irrelevant self . . .

Certainly i never intended this thread to be a Michener bashing fest . . . but one must take one's pleasure where one finds it . . . and i am well pleased . . .

McT, you wonder about hysteria as a noun?



I wonder that you wonder.

MA, Don't most "cookie cutter" historians do the same? Does that aleviate the historians/writers responsibilty? There is one author whose name slips my grasp, that was accused of plagerism because an quote wasn't footnoted, however the original source was documented in the bibliography.

Here I went through all the trouble to document all my hysteria, and THEY ERASE IT?? Life just isn't fair!!

You forgot the most dangerous hysteria Set.

Mass hysteria. It's always in the middle.